Carter handed me another weapon. "Gregg, try this."
I leveled the old explosive projector; Carter crouched beside me. But before I could press the trigger, from somewhere down the starlit deck an electro beam hit me. The little rifle exploded, broke its breech. I sank back to the floor, tingling from the shock of the hostile current. My hands were blackened from the exploded powder.
Carter seized me. "No use. Hurt?"
"No."
The stars through the dome windows were swinging. A long swing—the shadows and patterns on the starlit deck were all shifting. The Planetara was turning. The heavens revolved in a great round sweep of movement, then settled as we took our new course.
Hahn at the turret controls had swung us. The Earth and the Sun showed over our bow quarter. The sunlight mingled red-yellow with the brilliant starlight. Hahn's signals were sounding; I heard them answered from the mechanism rooms down below. Brigands there—in full control. The gravity plates were being set to the new positions: We were on our new course. Headed a point or two off the Earthline. Not headed for the Moon? I wondered.
Carter and I were planning nothing. What was there to plan? We were under observation. A Martian paralyzing ray—or an electronic beam, far more deadly than our own puny weapons—would have struck us the instant we tried to leave the chart room.
My thoughts were interrupted by a shout from down the deck. At a corner of the cabin superstructure some fifty feet from our windows the figure of Miko appeared. A radiance barrage hung about him like a shimmering mantle. His voice sounded: "Gregg Haljan, do you yield?"
Carter leaped up from where he and I were crouching. Against all reason of safety he leaned from the low window, waving his hamlike fist.
"Yield? No! I am in command here, you pirate! Brigand—murderer!"